A senior U.S. official has revealed that the U.S. government might begin approving licenses for companies to start new sales with the Chinese firm, Huawei, within as little as two weeks. Back in May, Huawei was added to the United States' Commerce Department’s list which bans U.S. firms selling American-made goods and services unless they’ve received a license to do so.

Last week, it was announced that U.S. companies could begin applying for licenses to sell to Huawei, however, it was unclear how long it would take for the Department of Commerce to approve those licenses. With today’s revelation, we now know that licenses will start being issued two to four weeks from now.

According to Reuters, the news that the DoC would begin handing out licenses in the next few weeks came via a representative from an unnamed manufacturer who had been told by a U.S. official when the licenses would begin being handed out. The criteria to receive licenses was not revealed by the U.S. official but did say that licenses would be issued case-by-case, at least at first.

Despite the U.S. relaxing its stance against Huawei, the Chinese firm believes it should be taken off the list altogether. A spokesperson for the firm previously said:

“The Entity list restrictions should be removed altogether, rather than have temporary licenses applied for US vendors. Huawei has been found guilty of no relevant wrongdoing and represents no cybersecurity risk to any country so the restrictions are unmerited.”

The U.S. market is very important for Huawei, not only does it sell a lot of devices there, it also does a sizable amount of trade with U.S. firms. In 2018, it spent $11 billion buying from U.S. firms such as Qualcomm, Intel, and Micron Technology - that represents a little over a seventh of its total spend on components.